Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture

by Oswaldo Zavala

A study conducted by the Drug Policy Program at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE, in Spanish) showed that the armed forces’ rate of lethality grew dramatically during the War on Drugs ordered by Calderón. Between 2007 and 2011, according to the study, 86.1 percent of murdered civilians who allegedly confronted the Army and federal police were killed with “perfect lethality,” that is, in confrontations where all enemy combatants were killed with no survivors left. All this without Federal Ministerial Police investigations that could prove that the murdered civilians had some link to “organized crime.” The Mexican Navy has the highest lethality rate: 17.3 deaths for every civilian injured. This is followed by the Mexican Army with 9.1 deaths per injury and then the Federal Police with 2.6 deaths per injury. CIDE researchers also point out that violence increases by 6 percent with each combat and over a period of three months. And even more serious: of the 3,327 documented clashes, 84 percent were actually caused by the Mexican Armed Forces. Only 7 percent were direct attacks against the Mexican Armed Forces. Alejandro Madrazo, one of the CIDE researchers, interprets the data unambiguously: “The high lethality and perfect lethality levels are a very strong indication that we are facing extrajudicial executions or the excessive use of public force.”28